An image may have several frames—logical and physical—associated with it. A frame may comprise an alternate or specialized representation of the main image or may comprise a separate image in the same container that includes the main image. For example, a typical image container may include a thumbnail frame and a full-resolution image frame. As another example, a Tiff file representing a fax may have several frames in it, each representing a different page of the fax. The data associated with physical frames of an image is usually stored in a container associated with the image. The container may include one or more physical frames and metadata regarding the image.
A physical frame comprises data that is stored in the container that may be used to display a view of the image. For example, a camera picture image container may include a frame that includes raw sensor data of the image.
The data of a logical frame, on the other hand, is not stored in the container of an image; rather, a logical frame may be created upon demand from image data. For example, a preview frame may be created from image data and displayed upon demand. The preview frame may be cached in memory or disposed of after use, but need not be stored in the container.
It may be desirable to associate other frames such as embedded preview, fast preview, full resolution image, and the like with an image. What is needed is a method and system for obtaining a desired frame or identifying a selected frame.